paradigmatic
"Paradigmatic" is a rich adjective with two main senses. In everyday academic language, it describes something that is a perfect, classic example of its kind. In linguistics, it has a more technical meaning related to how words relate to each other in a language system. Here are both senses explained clearly.
When something is paradigmatic, it is the clearest, most typical example of a category or idea — like a model that all other examples are compared to. Think of it as the 'gold standard' version of something. If someone calls a piece of work paradigmatic, they mean it represents its type so well that it could be used to teach others what that type looks like.
academic writing, criticism, philosophy · Modern, common in academic and intellectual contexts
The French Revolution is often seen as the paradigmatic example of a popular uprising against an oppressive government.
Her novel is considered paradigmatic of 20th-century feminist literature.
A 'paradigm' is a set of ideas, rules, or a framework that a whole field or community follows. So 'paradigmatic' can describe anything that belongs to or defines such a framework. When scientists talk about a 'paradigmatic shift', they mean a fundamental change in the way an entire field thinks about something.
science, philosophy, social sciences · Modern, widely used in academic and professional writing
In linguistics, words in a language can relate to each other in two ways. 'Paradigmatic' describes the relationship between words that could substitute for each other in the same position in a sentence. For example, in the sentence 'The cat sat on the mat', the words 'cat', 'dog', and 'bird' are in a paradigmatic relationship — you could swap one for another and the sentence would still make grammatical sense.
linguistics, language studies · Technical, used in linguistics since the 20th century